


Alice in the White House

by toodlepip



Category: Resident Evil (Movieverse)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-29
Updated: 2015-08-29
Packaged: 2018-04-17 22:17:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4683392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toodlepip/pseuds/toodlepip
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>May be continued... if it goes somewhere interesting.</p></blockquote>





	Alice in the White House

Alice Abernathy looked into the soldier's eyes, and cursed herself for an idiot.

She should have expected it. Wesker was that sort of monster, when he wasn't feeling the T-Virus chewing at him. Evil. Inquisitive. Insidious. She should have known that Wesker wouldn't flinch from mobilising clones in the White House; hell, hadn't they killed hundreds of her sisters, under Wesker's guidance, with his love? He'd worked with the worst of the Umbrella projects. He'd been worse than most. The monster Wesker was not squeamish. 

Alice knew that. Even so, she hadn't expected to see Carlos Oliveira walking the halls. His body, maybe, but not him. So she hadn't expected to see his expression soften in recognition. She most certainly hadn't expected him to know her face, to drop his gun (carefully; Carlos wasn't the kind to lose track of a firearm) and fold her into his arms and say, 'Alice - you made it. I missed you, kid.'  

But in retrospect, maybe not finding him here ought to have seemed the more unlikely proposition. She was here, wasn't she? And under the circumstances, hell, they were both going to be everywhere. Who else was left to pull the trigger?

She thought of the great, vaulted submarine research facility which Carlos - her Carlos - had not lived to see. She remembered the suburban zone, constructed with every thought to cinematic effect, a front-room facility for marketing expensive atrocities: careful lighting, visual effects and movie-set CGI , containing twee houses with white picket fences, the curtains of each bedroom carefully matched by long-dead interior designers to the inhabitant's gender, age and weight of social expectation.

Then, Ada Wong had followed her from the street into the nearest open hallway. On the (primly carpeted) floor, she saw the crumpled corpse of a woman. A woman who wore her own face; another Alice who'd fallen victim to a monster. Dead. Again. How many times had she seen, heard, felt herself die?

"They're using clones of me," she'd said, then.  

 Ada had laid out, flatly, the obvious fact: "You were one of the fifty basic models. Umbrella imprints them with basic memories, just enough to ensure a correct emotional response -"  

 She hadn't believed Ada, not at first. But then it had started to make sense. Alice. One of the fifty basic pieces found in every Umbrella Corporation theatrical production, out soon to a city near you. 

 A little later, fighting the thing in the child's bedroom upstairs, she saw a little box full of Lego bricks. She understood. That's me. Alice. Just one of the fifty components in the Corporation's apocalypse construction kit.  

She wasn't _in_  it. She was  _part of_ it. You build houses with bricks and mortar. With Alice and Carlos and Rain Ocampo, you build … whatever this was. Whatever you called the end to which the human race, whimpering, moaning and hungering for flesh, would lurch. 

She looked into Carlos' eyes, saw the smile in them.  

Part of her mind wondered: where did Wesker get Carlos' memories? Was this Carlos simply Wesker's guess... or a copy? It was a futile question. Even before that last day in the desert, Wesker's malign attention had been closer to them than they'd ever liked to believe. In the long, tense nights, she'd wondered whether any of them had been free of telemetry, of bugs. Every mosquito whine had brought to mind the skittering of metal carapaces. Sometimes she'd felt eyes on her and heard the white noise of their inquisitiveness in the hungry silence. Think of nothing, and something would scratch at the back of her mind. Alice had learned to trust her intuitions. Umbrella played a long game. 

She reflexively moved to block him. And thought- why? And accepted the embrace. 

His skin was warm and dry and smelt of smoke. His arms -  

 He'd caught her uncertainty. (Of course he had. He was Carlos. He could read her as well as any of her comrades-in-arms ever had. Better.) She pulled away, to see his face.   

He spread his hands, waggling his fingers comically into empty space. "I know," he said. "I'm dead." 

"Yeah." Once or twice. More.  Ever and always.

"Guess I'm just born lucky..." He sobered. "Some of us remember him. Your Carlos. And the others. Sergei, you remember Sergei? The squad?" 

Some of us? The confusion must have shown in her eyes. He indicated a window with a flick of his eyes. Outside, another Carlos stood, holding a rifle, gazing out across the White House lawn. The other Carlos was sucking at the remnant of a cigarette. Figured.

Alice shook her head minutely. "You can shoot," she said. "And I'm in no place to say who's real, or even whether it matters. This look like a good time for philosophy, soldier?" 

 "Eschatology, maybe…"  

 It was an old joke. Funnier whispered into the stillness of desert nights than here, in the remains of the White House, where their voices were raised by necessity against crackling gunfire and the hiss of flamethrowers. And it was _theirs_. 

She grabbed his wrist with preternatural strength. Startled, he reciprocated, hands raised to block her attack. There was a moment of terse silence. His hands were calloused and warm, so right, a perfect copy. 

 _\- an ideal facsimile designed by a madman to cloud Alice's thoughts and lower her resistance_...  

 _\- bullshit_. She was Alice. Alice down the rabbit hole. If Wesker thought her so weak, he little knew his weapon.  

She understood her life, knew it to be a dark fantasy. What was one more narrative twist? No resurrection could discomfit Alice Abernathy. Not any more. She knew, with utmost certainty, that the gates of Hell resembled nothing more than a revolving door.

She smiled, then. "You'll do," she told him. "Just stay sharp. All of you."  

"We aren't quite an endangered species," he said. 

"Not yet," she agreed drily. "Keep it that way. And, Carlos?" 

He grinned at her, lopsided, the corner of his mouth pulled to the left. That smile. Such a familiar gesture.  

"It's good to have you back."  

**Author's Note:**

> May be continued... if it goes somewhere interesting.


End file.
